“Boldly Going…Again!”

The Enterprise is finished.

Well, Dear Reader. It’s been a while. Time to get back on the horse. Lets get to it!

So welcome back once again with a look at the finished U.S.S. Enterprise as she appeared in the second series of Star Trek: Discovery. It’s been a while now, but if you remember, I spoke about this kit way back in the post ‘Boldly Going…‘ where I took a look at the kit in it’s disassembled form.

A few weeks back, I had finished this marvelous kit. This is the first time where I’ve completed a Star Trek kit and not felt like I wanted a second shot at it. And it has been an interesting learning curve, there are things I would have done differently especially in decaling the warp nacelles, but I’ll come onto that in a moment. This kits biggest success for me was in it’s simplicity, and i don’t mean that in sense that its a snap fit kit, but this is a kit I can easily recommend for new builders. with the kit being molded in the the colour it needs to be, you don’t need to have model making skills to make this look great, you’d need to colour the clear pieces and the deflector dish, but that’s it. You can afford to be bold with the decals they’re nice, sturdy and forgiving and finish the ship off perfectly, you just need a little patience and you’ll do well with them.

As you can see in the pictures, I elected to paint my copy of the model (You can find the colours I used in the previous post about this kit), and overall, I like it. I do sometimes look at it and wonder ‘should I have used Steel rather than Dark Steel as the base colour’, I do look at it and think it’s too dark, but then I think it fits quite well with Discovery’s tone and colour palette, plus, the white of the paint and decals and the the other lighter colours pop against the darker base.

Now, in the big picture of things, my thoughts are largely positive. There was something I did notice in regards to the port side nacelle pylon.

It’s not easy to see here, but the port nacelle hangs a little lower that the Starboard one. At first I thought I had the saucer section just mis-positioned ever so slightly. But no, that was fine. I feel like this is something I did wrong, though what that was isn’t clear. The piece fixes perfectly into where it sits on the engineering section and there is no visible warps in the part. It’s the one thing that lets an otherwise perfect kit down.

Also, in regards to the engines, the decals were a struggle to lay down. As I assembled the nacelles I attached the four fin parts before painting. Now, if you remember back to my original post I mentioned that a slight molding issue meant there was a gap between the part and one of its connector pegs on one of those aforementioned fin parts, as if a small bubble popped in the process during the kits creation. Well, I glued that down only to discover that the decals should have gone on first before those parts. I had to do a little selective trimming and Micro Sol was very much my friend. But, if I was to have another go at this one again, I would have done the decals first then use canopy glue to stick the fins down.

There was only eight smaller detail decals that I didn’t use, these were four that covered the deflector housing behind the deflector dish and eight little details that sat towards the front of the warp nacelles. These were really fiddly and I couldn’t get them to sit well. Thankfully, their omission from the build hasn’t harmed the final look.

I had a a couple of decal misplacements on the saucer section, but otherwise I’m really happy with how this kit turned out. Polar Lights have done a really good job with these Star Trek: Discovery kits and I’m looking forward to a second attempt at the Discovery itself and the Shenzhou. Lets hope we get more kits from the Discovery series later down the line.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. I recently went back into my Pinterest account and had an idea. Originally I had in mind of having a gallery tab so that you could see more of the models I’ve built, but I’m conscious of filling up space I have on WordPress for photo’s at the moment. Once I’ve figured what the best way is to use Pinterest for this, I’ll start directing you there for more photo’s.

It’s Halloween this week and I have something in mind to talk about in the next post, in fact I’m watching part of what I’m talking about as I write this. So, until next time, I’ll see you soon, and I won’t leave it as long this time.

‘Let’s Take A Look At…’

Hello, Dear Reader, and welcome back to my blog. Today, I’m going a bit experimental with this one. What I’d like to do now and again is take a look at the world of pop-culture and take a look at thinks that I think are going to be quite interesting from some of the news and entertainment sites I look at. Now it could be news on model kits, films, comics, TV shows etc, and I’d like to give you my thoughts on them. As part of this experiment, I have to admit, I got lucky with this first one and two things in the news have caught my attention. So with out further ado, Lets take a look at…

‘The 1:350 Scale Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey’.

This image is taken the ‘CultTVman’ website, a link will be available below.

This is a kit I’m really looking forward too! The Discovery XD-1 is the ship that carried David Bowman to Jupiter to go through the stargate and in to the unknown in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. This has been made by Moebius Models who created the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ models a few years back. This is their second version of the ship from the film, this time though, it’s at a smaller scale. The previous version was at 1:144 scale and is a huge and expensive kit. As much as I would have loved to have had a go at it, I have no where to keep it. So, as I was looking on the ‘CultTVman‘ website (click the link to take a look at the original post that also has pictures of the kit), I was surprised to discover that they had made a smaller version. It’s in 1:350 scale and at first I was apprehensive over it as the last time I looked at models of this scale, it was the Star Trek kits by Polar Lights and they’re big kits. So on realizing that this version of the Discovery is around 17 inches, having the ship from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ was suddenly on my radar again.

And looking at the pictures, it looks an impressively detailed kit. Because it’s a long kit (even at this smaller size), it’s been nice to find out that it does have a metal rod that runs through middle of the of the kit to strengthen the thinner structure between the command sphere and the engine unit at the back. I was worried how they would do that with just plastic. It also looks like it’ll retail at around $59.99 in America, so it’s a bit more forgiving on the wallet, of course, to have it over here in the UK you’d need to have a hunt to find as good a deal as possible as it will be a bit more to get over here. My hope is, is that a company like ‘Revell Germany’ can use the molds to sell the kit in Europe, like they did with Moebius’ ‘Battlestar Galactica’ kits. To find out more details and to see the pictures, click on the link to ‘CultTVman’ above.

‘The Batman Trailer’

‘The Batman’ Trailer is available to watch now.

Over the weekend, it was the DC Fandome event. Now, I didn’t get to catch it, so I don’t know what all the reveals were. However, The important one for me was the trailer for next years ‘The Batman‘ movie (click the link to see the trailer on Youtube). I’m a huge Batman fan, but I have been quite cautious about this film. ‘Suicide Squad’ and ‘Batman Vs. Superman’ didn’t capture me in a way I wanted them too and I haven’t bothered with Justice League. And even though he was better than I thought, Ben Affleck didn’t fit as batman for me. Seeing the trailer for this iteration of Batman has me excited. Now, it’s only a trailer so what I’m about to say is purely speculation, but it looks like it’s taking a slightly different route from it’s celluloid predecessors.

The main villain looks to be ‘The Riddler’, this is an interesting choice. We haven’t seen The Riddler since Jim Carrey played him in ‘Batman: Forever’ in the mid 90’s. It also makes a lot of sense too, from the initial announcement we’ve been told that we would see Batman doing actual detective work. So pitting him against an intellectual equal will create not just physical battles but cerebral ones too. We get a glimpse of Colin Farrell as ‘The Penguin’, I’d forgotten that he was in the film and is unrecognisable under the prothetics used to create the character. We’re also going to be introduced to a new version of ‘Catwoman’ played by Zoe Kravitz, there isn’t much of her in the trailer, so it’ll be interesting to see how she fits it. We get to see Jeffery Wright as ‘Commissioner Gordon’, for me, he already feels right in the role for me and I’m looking forward to see what he does in the role in full, not too sure about the bit where it looks like he’s pinning batman against prison bars though, we’ll have to see how that works in it’s true context. I’m also curious about Andy Serkis’ ‘Alfred Pennyworth’, as with Catwoman, we don’t get much of him in the trailer, but I’m curious to see what they do with him this time around. I feel like I’m setting my self up for disappointment with this next one, but I think we’ve had a ‘Batman Beyond’ Easter egg. Towards the of the trailer, Batman confronts a gang who have there face painted. The face paint is quite interesting, it’s very Jokerlike, at least the one who speaks is. This gets me wondering if this is a version of ‘Beyond’s’ Jokerz street gang. Which intern makes me wonder if ‘The Batman’ is set in the same version of Gotham as seen in the film ‘The Joker’ and this gang have been inspired by Joaquin Phoenix’s character.

The one thing that we’ve all been wondering, is about Batman himself, Robert Patterson. For many, ‘The Twilight’ films have stained him and many judge him on those films alone. he’s actually a really good actor, he won me over in ‘The Lighthouse’ which is a brilliant film anyway, but he showed he’s much more than a sparkly vampire or Cedric Diggory. So I’m really confident that he’ll nail Bruce Wayne and Batman. And it looks like it’s going to be interesting performance, to me (again, this is just speculation on my part), but it looks like Bruce Wayne has replaced the self assured playboy with a man who feels a more outwardly broken and damaged, which is understandable when your parents are killed in front of you as a boy. But he appears to “find” himself in the suit. so could there be a touch of a duel personality with our hero this time around. we’ll have to wait and see next year (it’s going to be a long wait).

I’m going to make a bold prediction here, based on nothing really, but I think that we may get a Black and White version of this film later down the line. looking at the trailer it looks like it’ll lend itself quite well to the same treatment that, that ‘Logan’ got with it’s ‘noir’ version and ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ with the ‘Black and Chrome’ version. I imagine the details in this film will pop in the this format. Even though its a red image, you can get an idea how it would look in monochrome from the image of the logo on the Batsuit’s chest above.

So there we have it, Dear Reader. I’m going to end there as I could go on about The Batman trailer, but the idea is that this is to be brief thoughts about things I’ve seen, do let me know what you think too, it’s really interesting to hear what other people think. I really hope you do like this, I think this could be a step in the right direction for things I want to do with the blog, it’s ever evolving, and I think this is could help narrow things down to make my blog less eclectic. Until next time, take care and keep safe.

“Boldly Going…”

The box art.

Hello once again, Dear Reader. We are back once again in this new era of my blog. So thank you for joining me. Today we stepping into the world of model making once more. We’re going to boldly go where many modellers have gone before at this point, and exploring strange new worlds with 1/2500 U.S.S. Enterprise by Polar Lights as seen in ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ and soon to be seen again in the recently announced ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’. Let’s take a look inside the box.

So when you dive into the box you are presented with four frames of parts, three of which are moulded in a gunmetal colour and one frame of clear parts. You’ll also get two sheets of decals that have all the idents and registry’s for the ship and a full set of Aztec wallpaper to detail the model. I do have a plan for painting, but well come back to that in a bit. Let’s look at the parts…

The parts for the main body of the ship.

As mentioned, three frames of parts are moulded in gunmetal so you already get an idea of what it can look like colour wise when finished and it’s surprisingly well detailed. There are parts of the ship like on the outer part of the warp engines and on the side of the secondary hull where some of the detail can be painted rather than use the decals. When I first opened the box I was surprised how much surface detail there was. On mine though I found a potential fault with the injection moulding on one of the four ‘fins’ in the top right corner of the bottom frame, there was a gap between the part and one of its connection pegs, as I say, it could be a case of a slight hiccup in the moulding process or it’s just been treated a little too heavy handed when it was being packed. Even though this is a snap fit kit, this shouldn’t cause to much of an issue depending on how I paint the part, whether it’s painted separately or as a bigger assembly, it’ll be either a drop of liquid cement or canopy glue to secure it.

The clear parts and the display stand.

The inclusion of clear parts are quite interesting, this gives the option of lighting. I know, it seems impossible on a kit at this size, but if you check out the ‘All Scale Trek’ YouTube channel you’ll see it’s possible and it turns out quite well. Now, we’re going to dip into a bit of my build process thinking now in regards to the display stand. A little while ago I bought a couple of sheets of adhesive felt. I had a plan to use this on a display base before but didn’t do it at that time (it was actually my first attempt with the Discovery kit before that went wrong). I bought a resin set, one of those with the double syringe by the ‘Gorilla’ brand. So, what I want to do is fill the underside of the main part of the base with the resin, sand it down so it’s flat and then attach the adhesive felt. It’s something you find on a lot of ornaments and Eaglemoss use it on their display stands for their ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Battlestar Galactica’ models. We’ll see how that turns out. Now, on to the decals…

The decal sheets.

Here are the decal sheets. If they are anything like the Discovery’s decals, they will be nice to apply, the only areas that could cause me an issue are the ones that will go along the edge of the saucer section and on the secondary hull. Ive heard a few reports saying that the secondary hull decals are the ones that have caused an issue when they have been applied. I an way off that stage yet. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. However, before the decals there is the paint…

The paints I’ll be using.

To start off with, I’ll be priming the kit with both a black and a white primer, the black for the gunmetal parts and white for the clear parts. The Bussard collectors on the front of the warp nacelles and the warp grills for the inner side of warp nacelles will be Red from the Vallejo Model Air range and Electric Blue from the Vallejo Game Colour range respectively. The latter of the two will end to be thinned down to go through the air brush.

As for the body of the ship itself I had a bit of a quandary of that. At first, I had an idea of doing a two tone metallic colour, then I decided just to stick to the colour scheme suggested by the box, I really liked using the Gunmetal colour from Vallejo’s Mecha Colour range on my Moon Gundam kit (I’m going to talk about that in the next blog post, it’s bad news) so I would have been happy using that on its own. Having said that, I started drifting back into my previous idea of doing a two tone colour scheme. I had three versions of ‘Steel’ from the same line as the Gunmetal colour. Here are my results…

I delved into the world of spoons!

Now, I know what you’re thinking, Dear Reader, “but James, this is awe fully organised of you!” I know, I’m just as surprised as you that I’ve actually got a plan in place. These has been created with a base of Gunmetal and from left to right I’ve used Light Steel, Steel and Dark Steel. My favourite and what my final colour will be is the Dark Steel and Gunmetal. The two really compliment each other really well and create a nice subtle contrast where the lighter steel colours have a harsher contrast with the Gunmetal. The Dark Steel also has a nice warmth to it. It’ll be the Dark Steel as the main colour of the ship, and using the Gunmetal for the end caps on the nacelles and on the deflector grousing that sits at the front of the secondary hull. In keeping with the darker colour scheme, I’m also going to use copper for the deflector dish. Not pictured with the other paints, is black and white. The black will be for the display base and white will be for the clear parts in the saucer section. To finish off, to apply the decals, I’ll be using a gloss varnish and once they are applied, a final satin varnish will be used to finish the ship off.

The box art reprised.

And there we have it, a look at the 1/2500 Enterprise kit. If I had one criticism about it, its with the price. Now I don’t blame the seller for the pricing, it was a British seller on eBay that I bought this from. but I’ve been hearing this is really a twenty dollar kit in America, but it’s suddenly between forty five to fifty pound over here. I believe that Amerang are still the distributors of Star Trek kits over in the UK that I hope that the pricing is something that can be looked at. I also hope that I can get this completed on my first attempt, ever since I was nowt but a lad I’ve always had to take at least two attempts with Star Trek kits, but we’ll wait and see. If it does go wrong, It’ll be the decals that may turn into a disaster.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this one, next one will still be a model making themed post, but there’ll be a twist so I hope you’ll come back for the mid week post. As always, Dear Reader. Keep safe and I’ll see you soon.

‘A Little Pause’.

A bit unrelated, but I didn’t have a picture for part of this blog, so here’s one of mine of York.

Welcome once again, Dear Reader. I had no specific plan for this one, so I thought ‘lets take the time to pause. And no, I’m not stopping or taking a break from the blog as the title potentially could suggest, this’ll be my twentieth one so far, I’m not at a point where I want to take a step away for a break. I also didn’t want to force a post either. So, I thought it would be good to check in with you. I think it has been a good couple of weeks since we had a check in.

Goodness knows how long we’ve been in lock down now, but I hope you are well? What have you been up to since last I asked? It hasn’t been easy for many of us. But, there is light at the end of the tunnel, we just need to keep going for a bit longer with the social distancing. And that’s the key thing, we need to take care and avoid the temptation of illegal parties and simply heading to the beach. But what have you been doing? What have you been learning? I think it has been a really good time for trying new things whether that’s doing some online learning or taking up a new hobby. Self improvement is always a good thing, and it doesn’t need to be the grand life change that the phrase sometimes is connected too. I also hope you’ve been watching the marvelous Dorian Deathly and his Dark Tours of York streaming on Facebook. They’re really good and both he and his good lady wife, Mrs. D, are doing something every Sunday now exploring the paranormal. go give them look.

I myself, have set myself on with another online course. This time in mentoring. As lock down was being brought down on us, we worked tirelessly to ensure that my team and I could do the day job from home. It was by no means an easy task but we got there. I was helping to train some of my colleagues in some of the tasks of the job that they wouldn’t normally do. And that helping hand continued to be on offer after we abandoned the office. I got a huge feeling of fulfillment from it, something I hadn’t felt for a long time and in a previous day job. This wasn’t my first brush with mentoring, I myself am the product of mentoring. I probably wouldn’t be doing what I do at work or here now writing this blog because of it. back in 2008, I was made redundant from what I was doing at the time, it wasn’t a bad thing, it was a job that was going no where. I was unemployed for two years when I asked for a bit of help at a spot called Scarborough Jobmatch which in turn led to me getting an admin job there for six months (I would latter return for another six months towards Jobmatch’s end in that iteration), I used what I had picked up to help others who were like I was before them, in turn I helped someone into volunteering which led to them getting a full time job.

Getting that feeling again was wonderful, and so I have two online courses on my agenda, in the long run though both courses will have a place going forward in the future with this very blog. I have a plan. Fingers crossed I can pull it off. I’ve also seen where mentoring can come into the day job (potential spoilers for anyone from work reading this), I just need to figure out some things first before I present my idea.

On the model making front, I’ve completed the Andromeda kit from the Space Battleship Yamato 2202 AAA-Class ship boxed set, it’s turned out quite nice. And, I’ve started my next project – a Gundam kit this time – which will take me a little while, but I’ll come back to those on Thursday’s post.

Now, I’m still figuring out how WordPress works and I have realized that I haven’t mentioned where you can find me on social media or how to put links on my site to them. I’m on Twitter and Instagram under the user name @jimporter80, I mainly do the majority of my posting on Instagram, but you know where to find me if you’d like to give me a follow on either of those platforms.

Anyway, I’m going to leave it there for now, but I will leave you with a short story. It’s still a work in progress, but you’ll get to see this first draft here, as always apologies for grammatical errors. It was inspired in part by a streamed tour of York and an experience I had as a child in York. I can’t just decide if it was my imagination or paranormal.

The Darkness Behind Me. By James Porter

I was just an average tourist visiting York. Nobody special, just minding my own business. It was a lovely day, the sun shone and it was warm. I’d found my way walking up Stonegate lured by the sight of the minster calling me like a siren. I couldn’t take my eyes of the gothic architecture that grew nearer and nearer.

A good way down Stonegate, I found myself stopping, I looked to my right and there was a passageway. The street name bore the legend ‘Coffee Yard, Formerly Langton Lane’, so this was one of the famous ‘Snickelways’ of the city. The majesty of the minster would have to wait a few moments, a new target was now acquired. I slowly made my way down the passageway and something beautiful was revealed. Barley Hall.

This hidden gem was all wooden beams, like stepping back in time to the Tudor period. I took a few photos of the building. “Excuse me!” came the polite request from behind, “Oh, sorry.” I replied as I stepped to one side. As the couple passed me a chill ran through me. I looked up to the sky and grey clouds began to gather. I returned to my photography, one more picture then I’d head back to the minster. I’d moved a little further away from the Stonegate end of the snickelway and it seamed to get colder. I shrugged it off giving it no further thought. I raised my camera, getting ready to take the shot and something had changed on the small screen there was a black void in the corner near the foot of a stair case that leads to an upper external door into the building.

Still looking at the screen I pointed the camera down, the void disappeared. I looked to the area where the black void was on the camera. Daylight began to dim as sat there, in the corner was a black dog. It looked like a Doberman, sat bolt upright sticking it’s chest proudly out, its ears stood up. I smiled, I don’t think I’d seen a dog like it’s fur pure black. It’s tail was long – to long? – and moved slowly, like a cats. And it was big, bigger than any doberman I’d ever seen. A family came out of the Hall, smiling having enjoyed there time in the building. Another couple came past from the other end of passage way. No one seemed to notice the dog sat there, or the change in weather.

My attention returned to the animal. It was watching the other people leave the area. It’s head slowly turned back to me, it’s ears never going down. It’s bright blood red eyes shone as they locked on to mine. A prickling feeling spread over my back and up my neck. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. I began to walk, not the way I came to be at Barley Hall, but forward, down the rest of the snickelway.

My pace quickened, during my journey to the end of the passageway I looked back three times. The animal wasn’t following, but that gave me no peace. I was finaly at the end, I ducked for the low ceiling in the last few steps and out on to Swinegate. My breathing steadied, and I looked back one last time down the Snickelway. It was empty, but something was not quite right. Like the perception of reality had been ever so slightly twisted.

I moved on away from Coffee Yard, the prickling feeling was still there and the world around me seemed darker. That was when I noticed that there was no one around, no sounds, not a bird in the sky. What had happened? Where was everyone?

I’d reached the end of the road and stood in the middle of Church Street. The world was empty of life. A growl made look back down Swinegate. The black dog charged towards me, slaver pouring from it’s jowels, it leaped towards me, it’s jaws ready to sink there teeth into my flesh.

A horn filled my ears. I looked to my left, only to be hit by a van. And then… I fell.

I opened my eyes. I was sat in a shaft of light amongst a wall or night, I suddenly realised I was sat on a pile of gnawed bones and skulls. Before I could react, I heard a growl. I looked in the direction of the growl in the darkness and there staring back was two bright blood red eyes. Then the growls multiplied and soon, so did the eyes, spreading out around the shaft of light. And before it registered that the beasts had moved, their teeth sank into my flesh.

Soon, darkness was all I knew.

End.

Take care, Dear Reader. And good night.

Bandai Collection Stage… A Review!

Hello once again, Dear Reader! It’s come round to Thursday again, and it doesn’t seem that long ago since last Thursday. Anyhow, today we are going to look at something for the collector’s out there. Today we’re looking at Bandai’s Collection Stage, a versatile display solution that once I figured out what the parts were for and what you could do with this, I got quite excited and really wanted to share this…Yes, I got excited over a display base…And yes, this was what made me forget about Tuesday’s post. I know what you’re thinking, Dear Reader: ‘He’s easily pleased!’ and ‘He needs to get out more!’ But bear with me on this, this is really cool. Lets take a look at what you get in the pack…

…And to be fair, it’s not much. But it’s brilliance is in it’s simplicity. Now for total transparency, I got this with the ‘Space Battleship Yamato: 2022 U.N.C.F. AAA-Class Set’ which I spoke about in last Thursday’s post called ‘To The Sky You Gaze Upon…’. Now, if I remember correctly, this was the first time this display was available, and since then I have discovered that it’s now available separately (do bear in mind I’ve had the kit a while, so the base – on it’s own – has probably been available for ages!). What you get in the picture above is all that’s included. The main base plate, two ‘leg’ pieces and a base connector.

I took me a while to figure out what the pieces were for, at first I thought they went into big spaces at the back underneath the display base. However, by total accident I found out they slotted into the back of the base. It still didn’t make sense, why did the base now have two protrusions sticking out of the back? then I found this…

There are two of these sockets that sit at both ends of the front edge of the base, and then I had a light bulb moment. If you look back at the previous picture, the two leg like pieces have connectors at the top and they fit in these slots. Then another piece of the puzzle of the puzzle fell into place, the leg like pieces are leg pieces, the connectors also slot into the bottom of the leg like pieces. You can turn a two tier base into a four tier base if you have two sets! And you can make them longer if you use the small rectangular connector and connect another two bases. This, Dear Reader, blew my mind, I can’t lie, and this is why I got excited about this product. Now Imagine if you will you have a glass display case or a bookshelf like the ones you get from Ikea and you have a few sets of these bases on each shelf to display your figures or models. The display possibilities are endless. The next few pictures, I hope illustrate this potential so I’ll see you after that.

It’s good for standard action figures of all sizes…

I think it’ll be great for your high end figures like S.H. Figuarts too.

Great for For collectors of Transformers for both official and third party figures.

It makes a great display solution for Hotwheels and Matchbox scaled model cars.

And it’s not just for us collectors of geeky things! It can be used out side of our fandom too.

So a wide(ish) selection of things to display on the Collection Stage. It comes in four other types, Clear, Black, Smoke Black Clear and Blue Clear. It seems a shame that this metallic flaked stage doesn’t seem to be available available out side of its initial release with the AAA-Class set, which is a shame as I think I would have liked to have displayed all my Space Battleship Yamato Mecha Collection models on multiples of the base I have. However, if you want to take a look go to Hobby link Japan, they seem to be the most affordable here from what I’ve found.

So there you have it. I think its a great idea for your displays what ever they maybe. and at a great price. and I really like it and am already drawing plans up of how I’m going to use them for displays.

I’m going to leave it there for now and for this week. Stay safe and I’ll see you Tuesday. Thank you.

An Addendum, An update, And Some Other Things…

Hello, Dear Reader, here we are on a Sunday. It’s gloomy here in Scarborough, we’ve had a few nice weeks of sunshine, but now the rain is falling. A good thing for plants and the ground they say, and probably good weather for blogging too. This little addition isn’t so much a proper post ,but a little extra because there was a couple of things I wanted to share that was connected to Thursday’s post. It didn’t seem enough on their own to really qualify a full post, so I thought I would expand it a little and show you a couple of my other projects that I have that are on hold at the moment so lets start of with the addendum to Thursday.

So, I’ve now officially started the Andromeda from the five piece boxset. I did decide to paint the display stand and bring it in line with the other kits of the range, and this is the first time that I’ve used an airbrush to paint, I’ll come on to my adventure in to airbrushing another time. But, I will say so far so good, some touch ups are needed then I can do a gloss coat to add the panel lines then I can put it together and add decals.

After the post on Thursday, I ended up looking closely at the Neu Balgray version of the Andromeda kit, at first I thought it was simply the same kit molded in a different colour, but then I spotted these two extra parts in the bag with the display stand. So it’s going to be interesting to see how these fit on the kit and what they are for when I get around to building it.

Now, an update on the Arcadia. It’s nearly done barring one final gun turret. Having said that, I’ve had a couple of issues with it that are all my own fault. The decals went on well but it was my own impatience that ended up wrecking a load of them. they seemed to want to stick to me more than the kit and I should have kept that in mind and not rush to get them on. The port side skull and crossbones went wrong as well. I couldn’t get the piece to fit into place, so it’s raised if the main body of the ship. But it didn’t stop there. In trying to get the skull into place, it snapped at its thinnest part of the piece which was the outer eye socket. I’m a bit gutted as I had good traction with the kit and feel like I’ve fallen at the final hurdle.

Anyway, moving on. I’m going to show you two of my works in progress that have ended up on a prolonged hiatus.

This one is from the Super Sentai series Ryusoulger, which will form the basis of next years Power Rangers Dino Fury. Its a Mini-pla and in total has eight packs in the set, these are normally sold in supermarkets and other shops like this in Japan. Three packs make up the red T-rex and the others are the other mecha from the series. So Far, this is what I have completed. Its hand painted using Vallejo metallic paints and Citadel’s Contrast paints. It’s a snap fit kit and from what I’ve learnt, these Mini-pla kits work in the same way as there bigger DX counterparts. they don’t have electronics like the bigger versions, but they do have articulation which the bigger versions don’t.

I called this the Wing Zero Honoo Dark Gundam. it was meant to be an evil version of the Wing Zero Honoo from the Build Fighter’s spin off manga Gundam Build Fighter’s Honoo. I bought two of the special parts frame for this kit that came out as part of a magazine. I’ve used parts of those extra parts on the head. this was painted by hand and with Vallejo paints as well. looking at it now after all this time away from it, there are things I’m not happy about the paint has scratched off in places and paint has thickened nubs on parts making them unmovable. On the plus side, I do like the colour scheme. I’d really like to come back to this one, now I’m getting used to using an airbrush. I don’t know if I’d continue with this one, or get a new kit and start again. Time will tell.

Anyway, that’s it for the moment. Normal service will resume on Tuesday, so I’ll see you then.

‘To The Sky You Gaze Upon…’

And we’re back with the Thursday post and it’s a model making one again. No delays this this time around. I was actually prepared this time… I know, I’m shocked too! Anyway, we’re going to delve into the world of Space Battleship Yamato, specifically the more recent remake of the series of 2199 and 2202 and the movie spin off Odyssey of The Celestial Ark. What I’m going to look at today is the Andromeda fleet from the second series. So hope aboard, we’re off to outerspace.

As we enter the 2202 (season two) series of the show, the crew of the Yamato has been back home from their legendary trip to collect the Cosmic Reverse technology, which they used to help repair and rebuild the earth after the war with the Gamillians. humanity began to rebuild the Cosmic Navy with the first ship to role of the production line being the Space Battleship Andromeda. The first release of this kit was back in 2017 by Bandai and was branded as number 1 in the Mecha Collection line, with, surprisingly, the Yamato itself being number 2, and would see a further three releases with a fourth due in September. I never got the single release of the Andromeda or the Apollo Norm as Bandai released the ‘U.N.C.F. AAA-Class Set which included the aforementioned models with three other ships in one box (being numbered as set number 7). the advantage that this set has over the single releases was that it comes with water slide decals rather than stickers, which is quite handy as stickers aren’t really helpful if you’re painting your models. Now with out further a do, lets have a look at the contents.

I’m not going to show you the full contents as it is literally the above picture with another three frames of the same ship parts, so it gives you a good idea of whats in the boxes. What is interesting is that I discovered that for the carrier parts (the four smaller ‘B’ frames) to be attached you swap out the bridge tower for these. Once I figured that out, I realized how versitile the kits were, of course I haven’t built the Apollo Norm or the other carrier variant of the Andromeda yet so how they fit together could be another story. the kits have their own individual display stands. These have been a bit of a divergence from the other kits in this line as they are cast in a clear plastic rather than black, I have a feeling that this was meant to be a special set rather than a regular numbered set and I think that’s why they are in clear. However, that does raise the question, Am I going to paint them or leave them. I’ll be using the name plates from the side of the box either way, but do I want to keep them unique or do I want them to be uniform with the other kits. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Now, It’s not the best picture, but the set also comes with this display stage. It’s a transparent dark blue plastic piece with metalillic flakes. The five ships will all sit on top of this, it’s a nice way to simulate the idea of space, it could be why the display stands are clear plastic come to think of it. Although, there is no way to have kits secured to the stage so if the bigger base gets knocked the ships could fly off, course unknown. I may be mis-remembering, but I seem to think I read or heard somewhere that this was going to be a limited time addition to this set and would be available to buy separately, if that’s correct, then you do have a nice display stage for your SH Figuarts figures or your Figure Rise Standard figure kits with having the two levels for display, I’ll have to test that myself actually, if it works that would be a good investment for displays in the future.

The instruction for the five piece set come on an A4 sized sheet which is unusual for this line as normally the instructions are printed on the inside of the box lid. I think this is the normal practice to do this rather than spend that money on a separate sheet of paper. I’ve noticed this on Bandai’s Mini-pla kits as well. They are clear and easy to follow and for things like colour guides you do have all the box art itself to find that.

The kit comes with a tiny set of decals, for the majority of these it looks like they’ll be fine to apply, but there are some tiny ones so there is potential that they could head into scary territory like the Ginga ones did, We’ll just have to wait and see.

Overall, these are nice sets and if they are anything like the other Yamato kits I’ve build they’ll be great little builds. I bought mine from Hobbylink Japan so go and and take a look if you’re interested.

So there we have it a look in the box of the Andromeda and her sister ships I’m looking forward to getting on with these and as a plan of attack I may space these out rather than build them all in one go, it could get a little too repetitive building essentially the same kit with more or less the same colour scheme, the Neu Balgray, pictured in the picture at the top does have a very different colour scheme so that variant will be fun to do. As I mentioned near the start, there is another version of this kit out in September, which is an unmanned drone ship in darker colours. so I do have a idea to get a couple of those and create a small drone fleet. We’ll just have to wait and see if that comes to fruition, I have accrued a bit of a back log of kits at the moment. Anyway, that’s it for now have a nice weekend and I’ll see you back here on Tuesday.